Church

We’re currently in a message series called “Become Part of the Family.” In this message series we’re talking about God’s purpose for your life of community or fellowship. God has five purposes for your life and building relationships within the family of God is the one that I’m going to talk about today. None of God’s five purposes for your life is optional. If you don’t grow in these purposes, you’re not going to reach the potential that God created you with. More than that, if you don’t grow in these purposes, you’re going to go through a lot of needless pain in life as well.

People today are relationally challenged, they find it difficult to build and maintain healthy relationships. The most stable of all relationships should be marriage, remember the “till death do us part” phrase? Yet currently about 50% of first marriages end in divorce and the rate for second marriages is even higher. Is this normal? Not at all, people simply don’t know much about building relationships. Life is almost always worse after the divorce than before. When the parents have problems in their relationship, whether it ends in divorce or not, the children have relationship problems and eventually carry them into their own homes.

Why do people today have so much difficulty with relationships? I’m going to postulate two main reasons. The first reason that people have problems in relationships is that they have ignored God and His principles in the Bible. You were never created to try to build healthy relationships without God’s help. Second reason that people have problems in relationships is that the sense of community that surrounded and strengthened families in the past has evaporated. God never intended for you to try to live life in a vacuum, just you and your family and maybe a few relatives. You were created to live life within the context of a godly community.

A strong family can only be built as a unit of God’s family where you are building strong relationships with other believers. NIV Ephesians 4:3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. This verse says that there is a unity of the Spirit in God’s family, a family held together by the bond of peace, a family where conflicts are resolved, a family that is strong and healthy. This unity and peace in God’s family is meant to permeate your family, but it’s not automatic. You and I need to make every effort to keep this unity and peace. If we don’t make any effort, the unity and peace can disintegrate and vanish both in your family and in God’s family.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my June 4, 2006 message entitled Growing Together In A Life Group

This week we’re back to our message series “Become Part of the Family.” In this message series we’re talking about God’s family right here at Life Church. When God created you, He didn’t create you to live life by yourself. He created you to live as part of a family, part of God’s family in a local church. Only as you and I learn to live in God’s family will our lives be successful, only as we find our part in the church will our lives fulfill God’s purpose. So today I’m going to talk about “Learning to Share Life.”

Sharing life with someone else does not come naturally, that’s why we need to learn to share life. Sharing does not come naturally, if you have children you’ve figured that out. Sharing life does not come naturally, if you’re married you’ve figured that out. But sharing life is the way that God designed you to live, you can’t make it on your own, you need other people. NIV Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!

Why do you need to learn to share life? Because two are better than one, they can accomplish more than each one working individually. If you have a problem and have no friends to help, you are in trouble. However, if you have learned to share life, you will have friends to help you when you can’t help yourself. A lot of people think that all they need is their own physical families. Well, you are better being in a loving physical family than living alone. However, if you’re in a family without God involved or you’re in a family that is not part of God’s family in the church,something is missing. Each person needs to become part of God’s family in the church.

Coming to church on Sunday morning is a great way to get introduced to God’s family, it’s a great way to begin the process of sharing life. However, there’s more because you really can’t share life with 100 people all at once. The process of sharing life or fellowship is best lived out in small groups like our Life Groups. Our Life Groups consist of 6-12 adults plus children and meet together regularly for fellowship, Bible study and prayer.

Some people think that the presence of God is only in large crowds, but that’s not the case. Jesus said in NIV Matthew 18:20 For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. So today I want to look at how you can learn to share life in God’s family in a small group.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my May 28, 2006 message entitled Learning To Share Life

Today I’m going to talk about “Finding A Place To Belong.” God created you and I to be part of a community, to be part of a family. Much of the behavior we see around us, some good some bad, is people searching to find a place to belong. It starts in school, beginning in middle school, peaking in high school and extending into college.

Youth want to have a group they feel they belong to, they sense what is termed “peer pressure.” Peer pressure is the pressure of others, real or perceived, to make you conform to the group. Most of the time peer pressure is perceived. A student wants to fit into a certain group and so they change their behavior to be accepted in the group. There’s nothing wrong with the desire to find a place or group to belong to. However, there are two ways that you can go wrong. The first way is trying to fit in with the wrong group, a group that encourages wrong behavior and beliefs. There are lots of those. The second way you can go wrong is to give up on relating to others altogether, becoming a loner, an outsider.

God has created you to be part of His family, the church. God has created your children, whether teens or younger, to be part of His family in the church. NIV Romans 12:5 So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. The Bible speaks of God’s family as the body of Christ. Each believer is to be a member of that family, a member of Christ’s body in the church. You as a believer are not your own, you belong to Jesus Christ and you belong to all the other believers in the church.

My hand is a member of my body. Now suppose my hand decided that it no longer wanted to be attached to me. My hand decided that it wanted some space, it didn’t need the rest of my body and so it detached itself and wandered off into a corner. What would happen to my hand? It would shrivel up and die. It couldn’t live apart from the body. The same is true of believers, a believer cannot live apart from the rest of God’s family without beginning to die. In fact, a true believer would never want to live apart from God’s family, the church. Yet today, sadly, many people who call themselves believers are dropping out of the church. Each one has their complaints and reasons, yet they are cutting themselves off from the very life of God in His body.

We see it happen at Life Church. Oh, there are always excuses, often it’s a job or children’s activities or sickness or busyness, but the end result is that the person who leaves the community of God’s family begins to die, their families disintegrate and their faith in God burns lower and lower. Don’t let that happen to you. This morning I am going to talk about how God created you to be part of a church family.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my May 7, 2006 message entitled Finding A Place To Belong

Somebody once sang the phrase “Love makes the world go round.” Although it’s not a verse in the Bible, it’s true. Now the love that really makes the world go round, the love that created the earth and put the stars in space, is God’s love. The Bible says that God is love. Since God is love and He created people in His own image, then love is at the heart of every human being. Without love, our world won’t go round, it will come to a screeching halt. Everybody instinctually knows that inside themselves. That’s why most of the songs on the radio are about relationships and love of one kind or another.

There is an empty space in every person that is looking for love, an empty space that is looking to be filled with a relationship, a relationship that won’t end, a relationship that will last forever. Last Sunday, we talked about how you can fill that empty space in your heart. You can only find true love, eternal love, by becoming part of God’s family, by becoming a child of God. But you know what, even when you become God’s child, even when you begin to experience God’s love in your own heart and life, there’s more that God has for you. You were not created to live life just “me and Jesus.” God said in NIV Genesis 2:18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” So God has a family for you to be part of, a family of other children of God, a spiritual family of brothers and sisters, the family of God in the church. NLT 1 Peter 2:17 Show respect for everyone. Love your Christian brothers and sisters. God wants you to both experience love in God’s family and He wants you to learn to give love to others as well.

Your Christian brothers and sisters are part of the body of Christ, just as you are. As we learn to love one another with God’s love, we are actually giving and receiving Jesus’ love in our relationships within God’s family. That’s the way God designed a church to function, as a spiritual family. As you learn to love, you’ll be loved, you’ll sense the empty places in your life being filled up, you’ll be fulfilling God’s second purpose for your life, the purpose of fellowship. Jesus also said in NLT John 13:35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. Love in a church, love in God’s family, will show people that what is going on here is really of God, that we are really followers of Jesus Christ. Would you want to be part of a family or group that was always fighting and didn’t show love? I wouldn’t want to. So God has put us in a family to learn to love others. So today I’m going to focus on how you and I can learn to love others in God’s family.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my April 30, 2006 message entitled The Importance Of Love

Pollster George Barna reports that the top priority of adults in America is their families. God put that desire, the desire to be part of a healthy family, in the hearts of every person. Regardless of whether the family you grew up in was healthy or not, God created you first and foremost to be part of His family. NIV 1 John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! Being part of God’s family and relating the rest of God’s family is one of the five purposes that God has for your life, the purpose of community or fellowship.

Today, we begin a new message series entitled “Become Part of the Family.” In this series, I’ll be talking about two aspects of God’s family. This is confusing to a lot of people, so I’m going to address it right from the start to help you understand. The first aspect of God’s family is the universal family of God. The universal family of God is made up of every believer in the world, those who have lived before, those who are alive now and the ones who will become believers in the future. One day the we’ll all be together with God in eternity forever. When I attended college, I led a small group Bible study. The name we chose for ourselves was the “Forever Family Fellowship.” Someday in heaven, I will meet some of the people from that Forever Family fellowship of many years ago. The universal family of God is forever.

The second aspect of God’s family is the local family of God. The local family of God is believers who are united together in a local church. They are united both by their commitment to Jesus Christ and by their commitment to one another in the church. Some local churches are small, less than thirty people, and you can get to know everybody pretty well. That’s what Life Church was like when we started out. Others are average size like Life Church right now, around 100 people. It’s actually hard to get to know 100 people well, but you can get to know a dozen people in a Life Group well. Other churches are very large. The largest church in the world is Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul Korea with a current membership of over 800,000. The people build relationships in that church in the largest system of small groups in the world.

Every person needs to be a part of both the universal and local families of God. It’s God’s plan for you and your family. It’s the only way you’ll be successful in life. Today, I am going to talk about the universal family of God. My message is entitled “What God’s family Is About” If you’re not a believer, you’ll learn how to become part of God’s family. If you’re a believer, you’ll learn how to see yourself and live as a member of God’s family. The more you do, the more successful you’ll be in life fulfilling God’s purpose.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my April 23, 2006 message entitled What God’s Family Is About